Syrian Dissidents Queue for Leadership Roles

Syria’s political opposition – long blighted by division and mismanagement – has repeatedly stumbled in its bid to build the reputation of a “government in waiting.”

But there’s still a long line of candidates queuing up to serve in the administration.

According to interim Prime Minister Ghassan Hitto, elected by Syrian opposition groups based inside and outside the country, the Syrian Opposition Coalition, or SOC, received almost 1000 CVs from Syrians inside Syria and across the world aspiring to serve as a minister in the new government.

Important admission criteria, according to Mr. Hitto: Candidates should never have supported President Bashar al-Assad’s administration or “committed crimes against the Syrian people.” The government-in-exile has long planned to open 11 ministries, including of foreign affairs, defense, justice, justice, health, agriculture, infrastructure, as well as the crucial briefs of water and oil.

“We received and reviewed some 860 CVs from Syrians all over Syria, as well as from Syrians abroad, many of whom are women. We were really pleased by the turnout,” said Mr. Hitto, himself a Syrian-American, after a meeting organized in an Istanbul hotel Wednesday evening, adding that the government formation is “near completion.”

The coalition’s largest faction, the Syrian National Council, wants to quickly form an interim government, as agreed when the nearly 70-member coalition was formed in Doha in November. But despite efforts to put a positive gloss on its progress, the opposition grouping still faces serious challenges. For one, rebel fighters have increasingly rejected the authority of opposition figures, especially those based abroad. Islamist rebel factions, in particular, are creating their own political branches.

The opposition’s bid to professionalize comes as President Barack Obama’s administration is urging rebels to organize themselves better to make it easier to obtain outside assistance. Washington remains reluctant to intervene in the increasingly bloody civil war, as the rebels have repeatedly called for more substantial help from the international community, such as creation of safe or no-fly zones, more arms and humanitarian aid. The Wall Street Journal on Monday reported that the White House is weighing up options for responding to a U.S. intelligence report released last week concluding that Damascus likely used chemical weapons on the battlefield, but that leading Democratic and Republican lawmakers prefer indirect assistance to a military operation.

The U.S. hopes that the interim government-in-exile would oversee areas that are no longer under regime control, and work with local committees in these “liberated” Syrian towns to ease the distribution of aid, food and medicine, repair infrastructure and work on other urgent problems.

Late in April, a senior State Department official said in Istanbul that Syrian opposition has made strides. “It’s not perfect. It’s got a long, long way to go, but when I compare now with what it looked like in November when I had to keep saying to them… this is about hiring people and setting up structures,’ they’ve come quite a distance,” the official said, according to a memo published on the State Department website.

Comments (1 of 1)

Leaders ordinarily would arise from the warrior class following such civil war. However, the warrior class in Syria is divided between Syrian dissidents and defectors (Free Syrian Army), Islamist jihadists largely empathetic to rebellion and war, but most are not Syrian, Syrian loyalists not wed to either Bashar Assad nor the IRGC, and the core regime Syrian Army now more wed to the IRGC than Syria. Look for the Syrian loyalists to bolt for a sanctuary among the Alawite in the northwestern coastal mountain enclaves, leaving the thugs recruited by the IRGC allied with Hezbollah fighters facing the Sunni Islamist jihad mercenaries and the Free Syrian Army opposition forces.

Civil rule in Syria seems a long way off, however, when it does come, whether regional or throughout the Levant, the vetted leadership list familiar to those concerned internationally and considered Syrian native as opposed to diaspora will have great weight.